Leaf Blowing Done Right

In another few weekends, my neighborhood will be filled with the roar of leaf blowers. As for me, I am a hands-on rake-the-leaves by hand guy. For my money, those bamboo rakes do just fine until you get them caught in a fence and the ends start breaking off (a minor inconvenience for the price).

For those of you with a high-powered leaf blower, you have to put out a lot less effort, but you often kick up a lot more dust. I recall a guy in my neighborhood last fall blowing everything in sight off his driveway, and he kicked up such a dust cloud that I thought it was smoke from a fire.

If you have a power leaf blower, here's a brief video on ways to use that machine more efficiently.